


getting lost

by sweetsymphony



Series: gone again [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abduction, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Winchesters, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-21
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2018-12-04 21:16:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11563485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetsymphony/pseuds/sweetsymphony
Summary: Ten year-old Sam Winchester was last seen wearing a gray sweater, green jacket, blue jeans and gray tennis shoes. Sam is 4"8 with brown hair and green eyes. He has a birthmark on his left calf and a scar on the back of his right shoulder blade. Anyone with information regarding whereabouts is encouraged to please come forward.





	getting lost

**Author's Note:**

> I have too many incomplete stories to be doing this, but I really can't help myself.

Sam Winchesters life begins and ends in the backseat of the impala, stretched across the cracked vinyl seats, cheek propped against the cool window glass. He’s seven when Dean is promoted to the passenger seat, trading restless nights in the back for tireless shotgun vigil beside their father and an abundance of little brother-free legroom. It’s lonely but Sam accepts his new role with all the quiet dignity a Winchester can muster and puts away the army men once and for all. The lull of Led Zeppelin, and the comfortable hum of an endless stretch of open road are all he knows: a constant, never ending road trip. He’s ten when it stops being fun.

They’re in Oakley, Minnesota when John finds his latest hunt (a banshee that’s killed two people in as many weeks), and it’s in Oakley Minnesota that the Impala decides it will go no further. It’s lucky though. Oakley is a shit of a town, but it’s in the middle of several shit towns that are ripe for hunts.

There are two kinds of hunts. School hunts can last anywhere from three weeks to three months. The longest one Sam can remember is the six months spent in Bennett, Iowa tracking a coven of witches across the state. Dad usually shells out for an apartment and enrolls them in school, Dean lands a girl, it’s as close to stable as they get. Home hunts last a week; 10 days max and mean they don’t leave the motel room. Ever. There’s no school, no soccer practice, and definitely no girls.

This is a school hunt and Dad rents a crappy trailer near the train tracks, and Sam gets ready to repeat the fourth grade.

“I need new shoes.” He tells Dean tiredly trying to refit the cardboard into the battered sole of his Chuck Taylors. Its fresh winter in Minnesota that means four inches of snow, soggy rubber soles and two pairs of tube socks every morning. The bed squeaks as he tries to mold the cardboard to the heel. They’re too old and the rubber is whittled down to practically nothing, water seeps in with every squelchy step.

“Good luck with that.” Dean doesn’t look up from the Dukes of Hazard and shoves another handful of pork rinds into his mouth. He’s sprawled out on the spring bed staring slack jawed as Daisy twirls her hair on screen. Last winter Dean had found a pair of good work boots at the Salvation Army and begged dad for two days straight. He snorts when he see’s Sam’s cardboard solution. “Nice job man that should hold for like a minute.”

“You think Dad would buy me some new ones?”

“No.”

Sam shoves the shoes under the bed and scrambles to the tiny bathroom. He frowns at his reflection. He’s pale, there are dark purple bags under his eyes and with the fresh buzz cut their father insisted on yesterday he looks even more sickly than usual. He’d gotten lice sometime in the two months that they’d stayed there, and Dad hadn’t had the patience to do more than shave it off. Back in Colorado he’d been Smelly Sam, the boy who lived at the Super 8 and wore the same three shirts day after day after day. Sickly Sam would be an improvement.

He blows his nose and washes his face with the hottest water he can stand. The trailer is cold, but Sam scrambles under the covers of the bed he and Dean share until the numb chill starts to ebb away. Dean doesn’t say anything, but he scoots over enough to make room and when Sam is finally starting to drift off, he feels the weight of another blanket piling on top of him.

 

“I see you’ve moved quite a bit in the past few years Samuel.” Principle Taylor peers at Sam over the rim of his wire frame glasses and smiles blandly. He’s got a folder half an inch thick on his desk

“Dad travels a lot. For work.” Sam tugs down his beanie as far as it car go and slinks down lower into his seat. He can make out the white cotton of his sock poking through the ankle of his destroyed shoe.

It’s the line they always give when they start a new school. Sam wonders what kind of work John would have to do to justify moving so often. He’s been to eight schools in the past four years, believable for an army brat sure, but not for the son of a struggling mechanic.

“Well we’re hoping you’ll be with us for a very long time Mr. Winchester.”

James Madison Elementary School is just like River Valley Elementary School, which was just like Thomas Peterson Elementary School. One school in a long line of schools. Fourth grade sucks.

He already knows all his times tables and the reading book they’re using is the same one they used in the last town. Sam puts his head down as soon at the teacher looks away. Usually he likes school. He likes dodge ball and social studies and short stories; but the idea of sitting through fourth grade all over again, being the only ten year old in a room full of nine year olds, it makes him want to go to sleep.

Last April Dad got caught up in what was supposed to be a Home Hunt and he and Dean spent five weeks out of school, trapped in a Motel 6 in Jacksonville because Dad didn’t have time to enroll them anywhere. That combined with the three weeks they’d missed that fall, was unfortunately enough to warrant a repeat of the fourth grade. Dean lucked out and moved onto the ninth grade, but he has to repeat Algebra and take remedial English.

For lunch he’s got a bologna sandwich on white bread and a pack of chips Dean lifted from the Quick’N’Save. Luckily he’s not the only new kid in town. Owen McNeal transferred in last week from Scottsdale and they sit at the same table, radiating strong ‘don’t-look-at-me’ vibes and bonding over their obvious outsider tendencies. During recess he and Owen play handball and it’s mercifully okay. No one is outwardly mean to him, which is a blessing in itself, but he wonders how long it will last.

The elementary school lets out forty-five minutes before the high school, so Sam trudges four blocks to wait for Dean by the gates. He sits on the steps outside, leafs through the homework packet he was assigned and tugs at the loose thread in his gloves until the tip of his thumb is poking out.

When Dean comes through the double doors he snags Sam’s beanie off and pulls it down over his own red ears.

“Jesus its cold out here. How long you been waitin’ Sammy?”

Sam shrugs and shoves his hands into his pockets so Dean doesn’t see the hole. These were his good gloves. Their old neighbor Louisa knit them for him last Christmas. “Not that long. Dean can we go shopping.”

Dean frowns at him. “With what money doofus?”

Sam’s got $17. A virtual fortune, he’s been saving it for months. A few dollars from Pastor Jim, from Mrs. Levinson for walking her dog, five dollars from Dad on his birthday. “I got some money. I need new shoes.”

Dean’s face softens as he looks down at Sam’s sneakers, soaked through with gray slush and navy faded to gray canvas.

”Yeah okay.”

 

The options at the Salvation Army are slim, but Sam thankfully finds a pair of gray Sketchers in his size. Dean makes fun of him because they’re incredibly ugly, but Sam is pleased. The Sketchers are snug, but not tight and for once he’d found the right size. Dads always made him get a size up to grow into. He wrings out his wet socks and wears the new shoes home, feet dry for the first time in days.

Dean stops at the Quik’N’Save for cans of pop, and Sam pockets a few candy bars while the cashier is busy. He doesn’t like the stealing but Dean says everything comes full circle, and that’s an idea that Sam can stand by. Dad isn’t home. He’s actually working today, doing some side work at the local garage so he can buy a new timing belt for the Impala. They eat a dinner of canned chili on toast and watch a M.A.S.H. rerun in front of the tiny black and white TV.

Sam thinks about starting in on his homework packet but Dean offers to play Uno so they do that instead. Dean makes him go to bed promptly at nine, piling the blankets on until Sam can barely move under all the weight, then goes to sit at the table and polish guns until Dad gets home like he always does.

Before Sam falls asleep he thinks drowsily to himself that Oakley’s not such a bad place to get stuck.

He’s wrong.


End file.
